Prime Minister delivers Republic Day message to UNC members

De­spite crit­i­cism over her de­ci­sion to is­sue a spe­cial In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage di­rect­ed at mem­bers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has again used a na­tion­al hol­i­day to de­liv­er a mes­sage specif­i­cal­ly to the par­ty’s mem­ber­ship, this time on Re­pub­lic Day.

In the mes­sage mark­ing the 50th an­niver­sary of Trinidad and To­ba­go be­com­ing a re­pub­lic, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told UNC sup­port­ers that the par­ty was “no longer in re­treat” and was now “dom­i­nant­ly march­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to a new or­der”.

She said the UNC and its pre­de­ces­sor par­ties had been “un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, vil­i­fied and dis­re­spect­ed” since 1976, blam­ing what she de­scribed as the “self­ish­ness, cow­ardice and ar­ro­gance” of peo­ple with­in the par­ty for al­low­ing that to hap­pen.